IMF's August Slate Runs Five Article IVs Plus a Ghana Review
The Fund's August 2026 output centers on bilateral surveillance, with five Article IV consultations and one combined Ghana program review rounding out the month.
August's research output from the International Monetary Fund is dominated by bilateral surveillance rather than thematic or flagship work, with five of six publications falling into general macro-financial assessment. Guatemala: 2026 Article IV Consultation—Press Release; and Staff Report, released August 5, gives staff's assessment of the country's macroeconomic and fiscal position over the coming year. Uganda: 2026 Article IV Consultation—Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Uganda followed a day later, adding an Executive Director statement that puts the country authorities' own perspective alongside staff's findings.
Mongolia: 2026 Article IV Consultation Discussions—Press Release; and Staff Report, dated August 6, documents the staff discussions underlying this year's consultation with Ulaanbaatar. Republic of Lithuania: 2026 Article IV Consultation—Press Release; and Staff Report, published August 10, extends the same surveillance exercise to a eurozone member, giving the month's slate geographic range from Central America to Central Asia to the Baltics.
New Zealand: 2026 Article IV Consultation—Press Release; and Staff Report closed out the general macro-financial cluster on August 27, applying the standard consultation format to an advanced economy and rounding out a set of five staff reports that together span low-income, emerging, and advanced-economy surveillance in a single month.
The outlier is Ghana: 2026 Article IV Consultation, Sixth Review under the Arrangement under the Extended Credit Facility, Request for a Waiver of Nonobservance of a Performance Criterion, Financing Assurances Review, and Request for a 36-month Policy Coordination Instrument—Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Ghana, released August 4 and classified under financial stability. Its title alone signals a more complex staff assessment than the standard Article IV: it bundles an Article IV consultation with a sixth ECF review, a waiver request for a missed performance criterion, a financing assurances review, and a request to set up a new 36-month Policy Coordination Instrument, meaning staff had to evaluate program compliance and financing adequacy alongside the usual bilateral surveillance.
No new World Economic Outlook edition fell within the month, so there is no flagship anchor to this batch. Taken together, the six publications show the Fund's August output running on its routine surveillance and program-review cadence, with Ghana's combined document standing out as the one case where program mechanics, rather than a standalone consultation, drove the paper's scope.
*Source: International Monetary Fund. Reproduced with attribution.*